Rain prompts money deluge

Some in Detroit barely recall the storm, but FEMA responded with cash.

September 18, 2005|By Jon Burstein, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

DETROIT -- A band of thunderstorms in 2000 flooded thousands of homes in the suburbs but caused no reported problems in the Motor City itself.

State emergency managers kept asking their counterparts in Detroit whether "they were sure that no damage had occurred in the city," said Tony Katarsky, assistant commander of the state police Emergency Management Division. "Their response was that they had received no calls about damage as a result of the storm from city residents."

But once the Federal Emergency Management Agency included Detroit in the disaster declaration for the Sept. 10-11 storms, claims began pouring in from residents reporting basement flooding.

During the next few months, FEMA gave checks to 87,624 Detroit residents. The total payout of $168.5 million is more than FEMA awarded in Florida last year for Hurricane Ivan, a storm that devastated the Panhandle and left 57 people dead.

"Something is obviously wrong," attorney Steven Liddle said. His Detroit office is filled with boxes of documents from class-action lawsuits he filed against municipalities south of Detroit on behalf of residents whose basements flooded because sewer pumps failed.

"There was no widespread flooding in the city of Detroit," Liddle said.

Then-Mayor Dennis Archer and other Detroit officials have trouble even remembering the storm.

Yet residents of the city told FEMA the storm ruined more than 70,000 washers and dryers and $25.1 million in clothing. FEMA awarded rental assistance to almost 16,300 Detroit residents intended for disaster victims forced from their homes.

In the initial weeks after the Oct. 17 declaration, claims trickled in. But as FEMA promoted assistance and residents began getting checks, applications skyrocketed. In January 2001, four months after the storm, FEMA approved 58,073 claims, 85 percent of them in Detroit.

In poor neighborhoods on the city's east side, landlord Jeff Cusimano said none of his 150 properties sustained damage. But at least 10 of his tenants came to him for copies of their leases to prove residency to FEMA for claims they filed.

"A lot of tenants said they lost stuff they didn't have," he said.

"Everybody was trying to get big bucks. Some people did. Some people didn't."

Mark Fuga, another east-side landlord, said he heard of residents throwing old or junked items in their basements after hosing them down. Word of windfalls spread through the community.

"People were saying it was easy money," Fuga said.

Alarmed by the large number of claims coming from Detroit in light of official assessments identifying no damage, Lt. Walter Davis of the state police Emergency Management Division was assigned to investigate.

"Do I think some of the reports were fraudulent?" Davis told a reporter. "Yes, I do."

Davis and officials of the agency would not discuss details of his findings or the outcome.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit said no one was charged with FEMA fraud.

Four years later, FEMA returned to Michigan after more thunderstorms swept over the southern and lower-central parts of the state from May 20-24, 2004. Detroit emergency-management records show 200 homes damaged.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department logged 150 complaints of basement flooding.

"We kept on saying how well the city came out of it," said department spokesman George W. Ellenwood.